Sterling silverware made in the USA after roughly the s always has a marking: either Sterling or You can find this marking on the bottom of platters, candlesticks, cups and bowls.
International Silver, Silver Co. These are just company hallmarks. They will look like stamped icons on your flatware. There are hundreds of hallmarks you would have to learn to know them all, but the most common are below:.
Lion Passant lion walking forward — This is a standard English marking that indicates sterling silver. The spoon was one of man's earliest inventions, possibly as old as the custom of drinking hot liquids. In Northern Europe, the first spoons were carved from wood.
Later specimens were fashioned out of horns of cattle, ivory tusks, bronze, and eventually silver and gold. The earliest mention of spoons made from precious metals is found in the Book of Exodus, when Moses is commanded to make dishes and spoons of pure gold for the Tabernacle. Moses asked Bezalel the first spoon-maker known to us by name in history to work in gold, silver and brass.
Since Bezalel had come with Moses out of Egypt, he must have learned his trade there. Many Egyptian spoons were cast in the form of handled dishes with a cover and a spout, an elaborate but not very practical design. Greek and Roman spoons, on the other hand, looked much more like the spoons we are used to seeing in modern times.
Pan, the patron of shepherds and huntsmen, was honored with spoons in the shape of a goat's foot. The Roman fiddle-patterned spoon, originating in the first or second century A. The first English spoons, made of horn or wood, were probably imitations of those brought in by Roman troops in Britain.
The Angles and Saxons introduced a spoon with small, pear-shaped bowl. By the fourteenth century, castings of bronze, brass, pewter and sheet tin were fairly common.
The knife, used by hunters and soldiers for cutting and spearing the meat, was first made of flint, then of metal. Its main characteristic was a sharp edge. Traces of the primitive knife, such as the incurved shape at the top, or the beveling of the metal to achieve an edge, are still present in some of our styles today.
Handles at first were only long enough to allow a firm grip for carving. In the s, the Duke de Richelieu, chief minister to France's Louis XIII, ordered the kitchen staff to file off the sharp points of all house knives and bring them to the royal table, thereby introducing the knife as an every-day eating utensil for the aristocracy.
Forks were introduced at the table around the time of the Crusades, at the beginning of the twelfth century, when Venice's Doge Domenice Silvie and his Dogess placed a fork beside each plate at one of their banquets. The forks took about three centuries to gain acceptance, probably because the custom of placing food in one's mouths with both hands, five fingers, or—for the refined few—three fingers, was more expedient than using a new gadget. Most dinner guests first carried their own knives.
After the introduction of forks, the custom of guests providing their own eating utensils continued, and attention was given to minimize the space occupied by the knife and fork when not in use, with the fork sometimes serving as a handle for the spoon. The production of tableware on a wide scale in England after played a large role in improving the dinner-table etiquette.
In time, strict laws demanding high standards greatly enhanced the quality of silverware. Silversmiths were required to stamp their name, the place, and the date of their manufactured goods on their pieces. The word "sterling" came to mean "of unexcelled quality. American silversmiths widely copied these spoons.
In fact, the colonial craftsmen's first silver goods were spoons. Table knives with steel blades started to appear around this time as well. However, silver forks and sophisticated serving vessels were rare until the late eighteenth century. Before the seventeenth century, silver could be melted and poured into shaped molds to be cast into a variety of objects, but more often it was hand beaten with sledge hammers on an anvil, or coerced into flatsheets of the required thickness by a version of the old-fashioned laundry mangle with iron instead of wooden rollers.
The hammering of the sheet caused it to become brittle after a certain amount of time, and therefore unfit for further working. At that point, it was annealed, or placed under heat of about 1, degrees Fahrenheit degrees Celsius , then plunged into cold water, after which the hammering could be resumed. Workers sit astride their grinding wheels in this photo from the Rockford III.
Cutlery Co. F irst used in the mid-nineteenth century, the term "silverware," referring to Sterling silver or silverplated tableware, has become synonymous with cutlery. Still, cutlery has been made of iron for centuries. In Great Britain, the area of Sheffield has been widely known for producing high-quality cutlery since the thirteenth century.
With the introduction of silverplating in the late eighteenth century, the area also became identified with silverplated goods, thus "Sheffield plate. Not surprisingly, Americans who sought to compete with Sheffield cutlery in the nineteenth century overcame opposition by reducing the cost of their cutlery through the use of powered machinery and simplification of the production process. By , the Russell Manufacturing Company of Turner's Fall, Massachusetts, had reduced the sequence to sixteen steps, each of which might be performed by different individuals.
The company consumed annually tons of steel, tons of grindstones, and 22 tons of emery; and for handles, 18 tons of ivory, 56 tons of ebony, 29 tons of rosewood, and tons of cocoawood. Tenney, R-New Hartford, asked if he could make out the brand and where it was made. Tenney had just taken the spoon off a table where the White House served refreshments at its annual "Made in America Product Showcase.
Tenney and dozens of members of Congress, titans of American industry and members of Trump's cabinet used the foreign-made silverware at Monday's event.
Oneida Ltd. Tenney and Sherrill Manufacturing have tried for months to convince the Trump White House to buy the American-made silverware. There's even bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer , D-N. In November, Tenney cornered Trump at the Capitol after he lobbied Republican members of Congress to vote for a bill overhauling the U.
Greg Owens, co-founder and CEO of Sherrill Manufacturing, said a member of the White House hospitality staff approached him and Roberts at Monday's event and expressed interest in their product, including their patriotic Betsy Ross line of silverware. But he has been through this before.
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